What about ye, Sammy?

Can someone do us all a bloody big favour and quickly send a copy of Tim Flannery's, the Weather Makers, to Stormont House for Sammy Wilson to read. Maybe after that he will keep his mouth shut. He denies climate change and is responsible for the organisation that is allowing NI's protected areas fall into a state of disrepair. Time he was shown the door I think.

Darwin's Birthday

Today marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, a man who work and ideas have contributed so much to the rural environment and continue to do so. To mark the event Queens University have just announced a new era in conservation research. My friends over at the Global Crop Diversity Trust have posted this nice piece, Darwin on the Farm. I understand that there are Darwin parties all over the land including those happening now at Trinity College Dublin. Also today at TCD there is a lecture on Darwin and Ireland. The speaker, Miguel Dearce has a book of the same title forthcoming this year and has also written on this subject before.

A letter from Belfast

This interesting paper was just sent to me by a friend. We have just left the year of the potato and this year we enter the anniversaries of Darwin's birth and the publication of "Origin of Species'. The paper, by M. Dearce at TCD, re-visits the correspondence between Darwin and James Torbitt, a Belfast wine merchant, regarding the latter's plans for breeding blight resistant potaoes around the 1880s.

Rural images

And the same fried has brought to my attention the nice photography of David Creedon, out of Cork who currently has an exhibition titled Ghosts of the Faithful Departed runnning at Photofusion, London. The exhibition tells the story in photos of mass emigration from rural Ireland during the 50s and 60s.

Farmers help to promote conservation

Here is an interesting article sent to me by a friend but which doesn't include a great deal of information. It highlights farmers being used to promote conservation and it would be useful to learn more about the project and how farmers are being used and if there is anything to do with promoting agricultural biodiversity.

Anyone with more information?

2009 Irish Landscape Conference

The 2009 Irish Landscape Conference will be held in Tullamore, Co. Offaly from October 13th-16th. The conference is targeted at policy and decision makers, local authorities, government agencies, NGOS, representative associations and individuals with an interest in landscape matters. If you are interested in attending please register your interest by contacting Anne Barcoe by e-mail: abarcoe@heritagecouncil.ie

A flyer regarding the conference can be downloaded here.

The crisis with no name

Interesting article from the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) about the difficulties of drawing attention to future food crises which have might have poor crop diversity as their cause. But is the Irish famine history´s biggest food crisis?